Exploring the 21st Century Learning Continuum in Order to Learn, Apply, and Thrive

Tuesday, July 21, 2015

OER, Fair Use, and Fair Practice Part I: A Personal Saga

My own saga of Fair Practice, Fair Use, and Open Ed
Resources has been years in the making.

As a faculty member, I have spent years articulating the
ethic of giving credit to others’ contributions, teaching about common
knowledge and citation.I was thrilled
when Creative Commons came along. Then stepping into various non-academic
sectors which include art and mashups, I was submerged, caught, whatever you
want to call it.

I’ll begin with a personal saga.For the past four summers, I’ve invited
friends over to watch jazz documentaries outside in our yard. One day as I was
feeling sentimental, I thought I might make a canvas memento for our house. So
I took this photo to Walmart and got this response:

They could not print it for two reasons: I was
using a screen shot from the film and the use of the image was not its intended
purpose and then there was the QR. I shared that the screen shot was one frame
and this was for my personal use only, and that I created the QR myself (It
opens to the YouTube Channel where I’ve bookmarked documentaries available on
YouTube.) No dice. I would have to bring back a statement that assured the technician that I could
use that one frame in a photo.

So home I went to learn more about Fair Use, which provides
the guidelines for when copyrighted materials can be used by others without
permission from the original creator of the work.

In the meantime, I looked up the conditions of Fair Use to
confirm the conditions for my personal fair use as defined by there criteria: “purpose,
nature, amount, and effect.”

2) Nature: the use of the image from the film did not embody
the central intent of the film, and it was used to create something different
from the original.

3) Amount: the image on the screen was only one frame of a
nearly two-hour long film.

4) Effect: This personal memento would not affect film
distribution.

But I was not about to go back and re-enter the world of a
narrowly-trained employee,, sympathetic as I was to her state of employment.

So I delved further and started looking for a copyright-free
jazz image in the public domain.

Enter now, my introduction to Flickr Commons, and the addition of the Billy Holiday shot and the QR to this photo of the screen in my back yard, which I then sent to an online vendor who printed it onto canvas.

Look for a future post about the conditions in Flickr
Commons.

Sources: (A very helpful Creative Commons 4.0 Fair Use Checklist
can be found at the Columbia Site.)